Saturday, April 2, 2016

Anne Waldman's Birthday

Anne Waldman's birthday today. It's become a regular feature here on the Allen Ginsberg Project. See earlier Anne Waldman birthday celebrations here, here, here, here, and hereHer reading in 1977 with Allen can be heardhere- (see alsohereandhere)A more recent (December 2015) posting on the comprehensive on-line celebration of her work (on the occasion of her 70th birthday) on Jim Cohn's Napalm Health Spa can be viewed hereand for more - much more - goheretoher official web-siteAnne Waldman, this past November, pitching forNaropa's Jack Kerouac school - here - ("And I think another slogan, for Allen and I, early on, was, you know, "We want poetry to wake the world up to itself"..)

from Anne Waldman's discussion of Allen Ginsberg, (Tennessee Tech, Cookeville,Tennessee), 2010 (amateur video of it here and here) "Ambrose [my son] and I actually visited him in the hospital and he was so concerned abouteverybody else. He was phoning his friends, saying, "What do you need? Do you need money? how can I help you?, I'm going to die, but I want to do what I can. I mean, it wasa really shining example of generosity at a difficult time. Anyway, we were, you know, arrested at Rocky Flats together, and I traveled with him many places, watched him on stage, watched him be this extraordinary ambassador for sanity and peace and justice andfighting for civil rights and freedom of speech (I mean, you still can't play his poem "Howl"on the radio, between the hours of, I think, 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., that sort of thing, so,censorship, so, just watching him, you know, in very particular situations, be, you know, be at his best "

"Once we were climbing to a.. we were in a Buddhist retreat and he was having altitude problems and I think at that point he was having some issues withdiabetes and had to watch his diet, but he..we were climbing, and it was so symbolic, you know, like climbing, climbing the mountain ( a hill, really) just to get up to this camp-site where we going to be doing some poems, and he was completely out of breath and I keptsaying, you know, weshould go back, you can't really do this, you need to go back to your tent and get some sleep.And he said, no, no, no, because, when I get there, I'll feel so much… you know, I'll be myself. And there was a sense of aspiration always with him, going the extra step and, of course, bythe time he got there, he was renewed (he was always renewed by his… you know, he worked very hard, you know (he died too young - he was only in his early seventies), but hewas always going, pushing. So that's an image of just..hearing him breathing, hearing him, you know, struggle for his breath, and yet the need to persevere."